FORKS — Forks Community Hospital became the third and final North Olympic Peninsula hospital to join the Swedish Health Network this week.
The affiliation is intended to expand medical services with the help of Seattle-based Swedish Medical Center.
Olympic Medical Center commissioners in Port Angeles approved a 20-year umbrella agreement with Swedish in October.
Jefferson Healthcare commissioners followed suit in November.
Patients will be referred to Swedish for health care they can’t get on the Peninsula.
They will be sent back to their primary-care doctor for follow-up care in what Forks Community Hospital Administrator Camille Scott described as a “seamless” referral system.
“Its focus is to unite the health care on the Peninsula with a tertiary so we have a better system and hopefully can keep care at home because we have the support of their specialists to help us at times,” Scott said.
Forks Community Hospital Commissioners Daisy Anderson, Don Lawley and Gerry Lane voted unanimously Tuesday night to give Scott permission to sign the affiliation agreement with Swedish. Scott said she signed it Wednesday.
“So we’re looking forward, hopefully, to have this be a long-lasting relationship that definitely benefits all of the people on the West End as well as the rest of the Peninsula, using Olympic [Medical Center] as our big hospital so that working with them, Swedish, it will help care here,” Scott said.
Said Jefferson Healthcare Chief Executive Officer Mike Glenn: “I think it’s great that through the affiliation evaluation process, we worked closely with both Forks and Olympic and look forward to continuing to collaborate with both organizations going forward.”
OMC and Jefferson Healthcare are paying $120,000 and $75,000, respectively, in affiliation fees for the first year of the agreement.
Forks Community Hospital’s fee is $15,000.
The discrepancy boils down to the size of the hospitals, Scott said.
Since becoming the first member of the affiliation, OMC has approved a separate agreement to join Swedish’s purchasing group for medical supplies — VHA — to save costs.
There is also a contract on the table to expand sleep medicine at OMC by bringing a sleep doctor to Sequim.
One of OMC’s biggest incentives to partner with Swedish is to install Epic electronic medical records.
Forks Community Hospital will chart its own course with Swedish, Scott said.
The West End hospital may want to expand education and telemedicine, join the Swedish buying group or connect to TeleStroke, an acute-stroke video-conferencing treatment program that OMC and Jefferson Healthcare share with Swedish Neuroscience Institute.
Scott emphasized that patients still have the choice to go to whatever Seattle-area hospital they choose.
Now that all three Peninsula hospitals are affiliated with Swedish, Scott said she envisions Forks working more and more closely with OMC and Jefferson Healthcare.
“We’ve already started to look at some of the commonalities,” she said.
The three Peninsula hospitals already share some staff and expertise to benefit the communities they serve and cut costs.
They already work together in political advocacy for adequate rural health care reimbursement at the state and federal level.
“The boards have taken an active role to support each other in that,” Scott said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
